“A secondary cause was the old offence, so general in the merchant service, despite all the warnings of experience—neglect of sounding, the lead not having been used during the day or night, nor on the two previous days.
“Lastly, the chief cause of so few lives being saved, there can be little doubt, was the same as that which led to such fearful results in the case of the Northfleet, viz., the custom of making use of night signals of distress for other objects, such as to call for pilots, to signify arrival, &c., a folly admonished in advance in the old fable of the boy raising the alarm of ‘Wolf, wolf!’ when there was no wolf, and then receiving no succour from his neighbours when the wolf came.
“It appears to be customary for the German steamers to make the Scilly Islands to enable their agents there to telegraph to Plymouth the approach of their steamers, in order that the necessary preparations should be made for a prompt disembarkation of their passengers for England on their arrival at that port.
“The saving of time, which, looking to the great daily expense of such vessels, with their hundreds of mouths to be fed, and their immense consumption of coal, is the saving of money to the shareholders, and is, of course, the motive for communicating by signal with Scilly, just as the maintenance of high speed in all weathers, and by night as by day at all hazards, is so, and which leads to so many disasters.
“All that we would suggest, in the interest of humanity, is that such communication should be left discretionary with the captain of every ship in the case of fogs, when it should be optional for him to proceed directly for Plymouth, or to heave to, or to feel his way at greatly diminished speed by frequent sounding, which would be a certain guide to him for a distance of many miles round the islands.” The writer suggests that, in view of the too common neglect of sounding, such neglect, when discovered, should be punishable by heavy penalties. It was proved in evidence that the Eagle line of steamers were expressly prohibited from firing guns, or exhibiting other distress signals, to make themselves known, but that other German steamers had done so, of which those on board this unfortunate ship now reaped the evil consequences.
On the morning of the 6th December, 1875, one of those sad disasters occurred which [pg 273]ever and again remind us of the dangerous nature of our shores. But a few months before the Schiller had been wrecked, with the loss of 331 lives, and now an emigrant steamship, of the same nationality, was to share the same terrible fate off the Essex coast. Happily, the loss was not so serious, and led to the establishment of a life-boat station where one had not existed before.
WRECK OF THE “DEUTSCHLAND.”
Few maritime disasters of modern times have excited more general interest than the wreck of the Deutschland: partly from the fact that it occurred so near the mouth of the Thames, and partly because a part of the German press, in a strange and reckless manner, advanced serious charges against the town of Harwich and the boatmen of that port, accusing them of allowing the unfortunate emigrants to perish before their eyes, and refusing them succour. The circumstances are as follows:—In the first place, the spot where the Deutschland was wrecked—on the Kentish Knock—is twenty-four miles from Harwich, and, therefore, at too great a distance for the vessel herself, and far less for any signals of distress or national flag to be seen from that place, even in clear weather. “Accordingly, the only modes by which intelligence of the disaster could be conveyed to Harwich would have been by the different light-vessels repeating the signals from one to another, and finally to that town, or by some vessel or boat proceeding there. Now it so happened that all the hovelling smacks belonging to that and adjacent places had themselves been driven into port by the violence of the gale and the heavy sea, and that the only available means of communication was, therefore, by signals from the light-ships. It appears from the evidence of the officers in charge of those vessels at the Board of Trade inquiry, although the Deutschland had been on shore since five and six o’clock in the morning on Monday, the 6th of December, and had immediately commenced to throw up rockets, and continued to do so until daylight, none of them were seen even from the nearest light-ship—the Kentish Knock—no doubt, owing to the thickness of the weather and almost continuous snow-storms, the master of that vessel first perceiving the unfortunate steamer at 9.30 a.m. He then fired guns, sounded the fog-horn, and continued to do so at half-hour intervals during the day, and at 4.30 p.m. commenced to throw up rockets, which were answered by the steamer.
“At 5.20 the mate of the Sunk light-ship first saw two rockets, which he supposed to be from a vessel on the Long Sand, whereupon he fired guns and sent up rockets throughout the night, but did not see the wrecked ship until 7.30 on the morning of Tuesday, the 7th. His first rockets had, however, been seen by the look-out on board the Cork light-ship, from which vessel rockets were then immediately discharged; and at 7.30 these were replied to from Harwich, they having given the first intimation to the good people of that town that anything was amiss at sea; and even then not that a German emigrant steamer was ashore on the Kentish Knock, but merely that some vessel was in danger somewhere on one of the numerous sandbanks which lie in all directions off that port. We have thus accounted for the circumstance of these unfortunate shipwrecked persons being allowed to remain for fourteen hours in their perilous position without succour from the shore, from the simple cause that no one knew of their danger; and we have arrived at another stage of our inquiry: viz., Were the means then adopted all that could be reasonably expected from humane people, who would gladly afford succour, if in their power, to any one in distress, to whatever country they might belong?”